A few days ago I saw the following question on a copywriting forum:
“Just starting out. How niche is too niche? I know that the more niche you are, the more high-paying clients you’ll get. But if you’re too niche, then wouldn’t it be hard finding target clients?”
When I was starting out, I had the same question. Largely because I had heard the same advice — you gotta niche down if you want to be successful.
Here’s my attitude about this topic, now that I’ve emerged on the other side of the newbie-to-successful-copywriter underwater passage:
If you’re just starting out, then you should be in the exact niche that the job you are applying to is in.
For example, when applying for a job to write case studies for a medical clinic, you say, “I specialize in writing case studies for the healthcare market. Here are two relevant samples.” (If you don’t have the samples, write them then and there.)
The point is you don’t have to mention that you also specialize in finance, tech, and pet food… and that you will also write emails, sales letters, and supplement packaging copy.
The time to genuinely specialize — meaning you would actually turn away work because it’s not something you want to do — comes later, when you have some experience… when you know what the market wants… and when you have an idea of which way you want to develop. Or as Mark Ford wrote in Ready, Fire, Aim:
“It’s almost always better to get into a new industry on the cheap by figuring out how to test the waters without committing yourself to an unproven idea.”
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